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There are a couple more reasons that may be subtle, but important in the future. First of all, at the moment, Firefox and Chromium both use GTK 2, but Firefox is more of an approximation in XUL. Although the GTK 3 port of Firefox is further along that any similar work in Chromium, this means Chromium will look more native in the short-term. This may bring some issues as GTK 2 probably won't be ported to Wayland or Mir, so it's like Chromium will run using XWayland/XMir for a while.

Aside from this, Chromium has some support for Chrome's Pepper API, used by the bundled Chrome Flash plugin. So, if Ubuntu considers Flash important, Chrome/Chromium is the only real choice to keep users up to date on the technology.

I personally think that most new features in Flash won't be used much, as it's already mature and people have been transitioning quite aggressively to HTML5 lately. However, for security updates and stability, using Pepper API may be essential for a pleasant Flash experience on Linux.

... First of all, at the moment, Firefox and Chromium both use GTK 2, but Firefox is more of an approximation in XUL....

Only a real small part of the UI uses GTK2. Most of the interface is html based(download, config) and absolutely everything has a custom look and feel, it barely makes an effort to use the color scheme. How can anyone claim chrome looks native? Most of the important functionality is implemented by each own rendering engines.

Mir may be a reason they are going chrome. If they develop support for Mir in their branch of Firefox, they would have to change the name to something like Ubufox or Iceweasel...

Aside from this, Chromium has some support for Chrome's Pepper API, used by the bundled Chrome Flash plugin. So, if Ubuntu considers Flash important, Chrome/Chromium is the only real choice to keep users up to date on the technology.

"Some support" should be "full support." Admittedly you have to configure it yourself (tell it to use it) but once you do then everything works perfectly.

"Some support" should be "full support." Admittedly you have to configure it yourself (tell it to use it) but once you do then everything works perfectly.

I did not have to configure anything. I simply installed chromium-pepperflash from the Arch User Repo and it downloads the latest Chrome for Linux package and extracts to pepper flashplayer and puts it into chromium. Only downside is that it doesn't support hardware decoding for videos. With the regular adobe flash at least that's an option when enabled in /etc/adobe/mms.config but it makes the player a bit unstable. If it's your only flashplugin you don't have to activate it in chrome://plugins and deactivate the other.

I did not have to configure anything. I simply installed chromium-pepperflash from the Arch User Repo and it downloads the latest Chrome for Linux package and extracts to pepper flashplayer and puts it into chromium. Only downside is that it doesn't support hardware decoding for videos. With the regular adobe flash at least that's an option when enabled in /etc/adobe/mms.config but it makes the player a bit unstable. If it's your only flashplugin you don't have to activate it in chrome://plugins and deactivate the other.

Yeah there's an AUR package now that handles it, but it wasn't always there lol. Before you had to pass a flag to chromium to tell it where it was

There are a couple more reasons that may be subtle, but important in the future. First of all, at the moment, Firefox and Chromium both use GTK 2, but Firefox is more of an approximation in XUL. Although the GTK 3 port of Firefox is further along that any similar work in Chromium, this means Chromium will look more native in the short-term. This may bring some issues as GTK 2 probably won't be ported to Wayland or Mir, so it's like Chromium will run using XWayland/XMir for a while.

Aside from this, Chromium has some support for Chrome's Pepper API, used by the bundled Chrome Flash plugin. So, if Ubuntu considers Flash important, Chrome/Chromium is the only real choice to keep users up to date on the technology.

I personally think that most new features in Flash won't be used much, as it's already mature and people have been transitioning quite aggressively to HTML5 lately. However, for security updates and stability, using Pepper API may be essential for a pleasant Flash experience on Linux.

The last time the topic came up it was already clarified that Canonical's main reason for considering the switch is because Canonical plans to use Chromium's rendering engine in Ubuntu Touch (instead of QtWebKit) and Canonical wants for obvious reasons use the exactly same rendering engine on both formfactors.
Flash doesn't even run on ARM Linux.